What We Leave Behind (10 page)

The mansion turned out to be a charming hotel where Jonas and I would eat lunch.

“You’ve been to Disneyland, right? It’s a Small World?”

I was ashamed to say I hadn’t. Had I been, I might have known that you ride a boat through a magical kingdom where each room is a different country with its own decoration of color, costume, music, and song, very similar to the fairy tale land I was walking into now.

“How did you find this place?” I asked.

“A friend told me about it.”

Each room of the restaurant was decorated in a color with a specific theme tied to the color. There was a blue room with a massive blue piano, a yellow room with a golden hammock to swing on after a long meal, a pink room with a dainty tea set for ladies who lunch, and even a red room filled with fresh roses for romantic evenings. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I wasn’t sure how anyone decided which of the many options to choose from. The hostess saw my confusion and said to Jonas, “There’s no request on your reservation. Would you like to look around?”

“You pick,” he said, “Maybe you know something we don’t.”

The hostess looked at us with interest. “Very well then, Mr. Levy,” she spoke, without a hint of recognition as to his namesake. “Come with me.”

We followed behind her, anxious to see the selection she’d choose. When we reached our destination, my mouth dropped open. She led us to the most spectacular of all the rooms we’d passed along the way. It was a corner space with floor to ceiling windows, giving the illusion of floating over the sea. Entering the brightly lit room to take a closer look, I studied the details, and something was noticeably off. “There’s no color in this room.”

“But there is,” the hostess replied. “You'll find it.”

We moved in closer, taking our seats at a wicker table with matching chairs. An overgrown mirror framed in gold rested against the solitary wall that wasn’t a window, revealing the ocean in its view. I saw myself in the mirror, and Jonas saw my reflection too. There was no hiding the excitement across my face. Our eyes met and we smiled.

Everything on the table was white. The white napkins. The candles. The roses. The chairs were draped in white and the carpeting too. All of a sudden, I felt very grown up.

“White?” I looked across the table at Jonas. “White’s not really a color…”

Jonas just shrugged. “Let’s not debate that right now, okay?”

The presumptuous hostess left us there in amusement before returning with a white, wooden basket and a large roll of paper that was, not surprisingly,
white
. We watched as she unraveled the paper, cutting a piece large enough to occupy the space in front of us. She then laid the wicker basket beside the paper and watched our faces with a queer look of delight. The basket was brimming with hundreds of hues and colors—our very own Crayola crayons.

“You two get to create your own color,” she said.

Jonas was noticeably thrown, but the fact that he wasn’t getting up and trying to change rooms was a good sign. Maybe it was a woman's intuition, but the sweet old lady had picked the perfect room for two friends, not quite more, not quite less.

Like a kid in a candy store, I reached for the crayons. To sit beside a table draped in paper was all the inspiration I needed. Forget that they were the tools of a kindergartener. The crayons were a means to communicate without inhibition, to talk without being heard, to express all the delicious things I desired to say. Choosing the perfect color that would set the mood for our colorful conversation was a challenge. I searched for the exact shade of green, like his eyes, but settled on a deep brown instead. Brown was a strong, sturdy color, deep in hue, perhaps deeper in thought. Jonas watched, intrigued by the transformation in me.

“You finally look your age,” he said. “The little girl happily playing with her crayons.”

“I’m sixteen now, no more little girl jokes. Pick up a crayon and write me something nice.” Then I started the interview I’d always dreamed about, the questions across the table I’d never been able to speak. When I peeked over at what he’d written,
me something nice
, I encouraged him to be more original.

“I’m just playing with you.”

“Well, don’t,” I said, “just answer my questions.”

And he did. Reaching for the red crayon, he wrote:

No
, the waitress is not an ex-girlfriend of mine.

Yes
, I take all my friends here on their sixteenth birthdays.

No
, you’re not a typical sixteen-year-old.

Yes
, I liked our dance.

Yes
, I’m happy to be here.

Thank u, u have nice eyes 2
.

He was struggling with his responses, wanting to maintain the self-control that would prevent him from going deeper. He was trying to be tough, brown like me, but his words were red and impassioned.

And I like your lips
, he continued, carefully drawing his rendition of red lips on the table. I lifted my crayon and drew a smiley face because I couldn’t find the right word for a sentence that downright baffled me.

And you look pretty today
.

It was a good thing she left the roll of paper in our possession because we had already covered the first with our thoughts, and I, for one, was ready for the interruption. By the time the second sheet hit the table, we were off.

Yes
, I already said I was happy.

Harrison’s
my middle name, and then
yours
?

I’d written,
Pauline
, and then,
please don’t laugh
, but he couldn’t help himself as I cursed my mother silently under my breath. “It’s not my fault that my mother’s favorite group at the time was Peter, Paul and Mary.”

“She couldn’t have picked Mary?”

“She could have, but it was too biblical. We’re not very religious.”

I switched to a purple crayon, wanting to soften things up a bit, and began another thought. When the waitress was ready to take our orders, neither of us could bring ourselves to look at her. Now there were two of us playing in the sandbox.

His favorite place in the world was Hawaii; he hoped to take his wife there on their honeymoon someday.
Whomever she might be
, he added. He detested girls who cursed, put their feet up on the seats in movie theaters, and lied. He also didn’t like a person with a big mouth. He wanted to be a doctor, that much I knew, but when he wrote
pathologist
, it was unexpected.

“Pathology? Why would you waste your talents there?”

“How is that a waste?” he asked, irked by the way in which I took the red crayon in my hand and vehemently crossed out the word that depicted a path different from the one I’d chosen. “What do you know about pathologists?” he asked, grabbing the crayon back from my angry grip.

“That’s not really being a doctor. You’re not
really
taking care of patients.”

He stopped coloring the picture of a devil, clearly surprised that I knew that much about pathologists.

“I don’t understand. I’ve watched you, I’ve listened to you. You talk of people with real diseases, and, yes, pathology is necessary, but you’re the kind of person who needs interaction with the very same people you say you want to heal and protect.  I just don’t see where it fits into this whole pathology thing.”

His eyes drifted out to the ocean behind us. “What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“You’re nosy and opinionated. Let it go,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.

“Not a chance. I can win at this game, Jonas. I always do.”

He broke away, picking up the blue crayon and writing
I had a dream
. Then he added,
once
.

“So did Gypsy Rose Lee,” I said, “and we all know what happened to her.”

This didn’t get the reaction I was expecting. Maybe he didn’t know who Gypsy Rose Lee was. Putting the crayon down, he reluctantly began, “I was going to be a pediatrician.”

“And?”

“It was first year and we had a gruesome experience in emergency.”

“The throw-up thing again?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

“It’s not a joke, Jess. I watched a four-year-old kid die right in front of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She was brought in after a terrible fall. Her face was a mess. We all knew there was no way to save her, but that didn’t stop us from exhausting every option. When she died, I saw her parents’ lives stripped from their faces. I don’t have it in me to go through that again. Pathology is clinical. I’d be contributing to medical advances. At least that’s what I’m told.”

“Having seen what you saw, doesn’t it inspire you to save lives?”

“I’ve heard all this before, I’ve gone over it in my mind a thousand and one times, and I hear what you’re saying, but maybe this isn’t one of those grandiose plans or dreams you’re so infatuated with.”

“‘You can have anything you want in life.’ Didn’t you just tell me that on our way up here?”

“Fate swooped in and I had a choice to make, and I made it. Besides,” he continued, “there’s a lucrative business waiting for me when I graduate.”

The words were upsetting. Up until this point, Jonas had been a man with courage—just like his dad—and now I was seeing this other side, this stranger creeping in. I said, “You should do what you love to do; someone wise once told me that.”

His beautiful green eyes were asking me who, and when I didn’t answer, he said, “Sometimes when you do something you love, the joy is great, but the pain is even greater.”

I clung to that philosophy, letting the words wrap around the people and things that gave me joy. “But what if you never experience that joy? That love? What kind of life would that be?”

He was silent, his eyes taunting me with
what exactly are we talking about here?
He was searching the table for something, answers, insight, maybe my hand, but it was under the table, clasping the other one tightly.

The waitress came with our food and he turned to me. “What do you know about love?”

I took a bite of my lasagna, set the fork down, reached for the crayon, and wrote,
It stinks
.

“And what do you base that on, personal experience, or some after-school special?”

J. Giels
, I wrote.

“What about you, Harvard? What’s your experience with love?”

He sunk his teeth into his sandwich as I prepared myself to wipe the mustard from the corner of his mouth. “Does it matter?” The invisible door closed, a window slammed shut. He reeled me in close and then spit me out to sea.

“Yes,” I said, “seeing that you know so much about it.”

It’s not so much what he said but what he didn’t say. A red flag went off in my brain, a warning signal that permeated throughout my body and caused my senses to switch into high alert.

“You remind me so much of Amy,” he said, “the way you wear your emotions for anyone to see.”

“I do not,” I countered, not caring about the lie. I never did have the power to hide things, at least not from him.

“It’s not such a bad thing,” he said, “unless you let people take advantage of it. You can get hurt that way.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked.

Never, he wrote on the table, in bright blue letters, all capitals, and then repeated the same with his eyes as he looked up from across the table. Could he possibly be preparing me for what was to come?

“You have stuff on your face again,” I said, pointing a little to the left. “There,” I said, as he dabbed it with a napkin. I was too afraid to touch him, afraid he might feel the electricity that was coming off my fingernails, afraid he might jump at my touch.

“It’s still there,” I said.

“Well, help me out.”

I reached across the table, our fingers brushing as I wiped the yellow mustard off his face. “It’s funny,” he started, “how people come into your life. You meet them under strange circumstances, chance meetings, and all of a sudden there’s this, this
thing
between you…how quickly it’s determined if you’ll be friends or not.”

“You mean us?” I asked.

Yes
, he wrote.

I wanted to say something fabulous and meaningful and sarcastic, but what? I wanted to ask him if he always bonded with young girls my age by puking on their shoes, because it was the only way I knew how to protect myself from his pursuit. If I divulged what was forming inside my throat, I would disclose too much, opening myself up to vulnerability. Could I let him have another glimpse, another peek below the surface, when he’d already seen so much?

“I like seeing you at the hospital every day,” he said, pausing, waiting for me to add something. “You like seeing me too.”

I asked, “How did your dad end up at Randalls Hospital when there are excellent ones in LA?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Cedars Sinai is one of the best.”

“Okay, I’ll indulge you,” he answered. “Randalls happens to be the most innovative and comprehensive for my father’s condition. Now stop changing the subject. You ignored me when I said I like seeing you.”

“I was ignoring what you said after that.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” he said.

“Finish what?”

“My thought.”

“Which thought?” I asked.

“Why we ended up at Randalls…”

“You told me already. It was innovative and comprehensive.”

“It was to find you.”

Silence.  I took the purple crayon and watched as a butterfly appeared on the one lonely spot of white on a page that told our story. Wanting more of his compliments, more of his attention, I ripped another page from the roll, moved our plates aside, and set the fresh, clean sheet on top. My heart, again, was beating at the vicious speed it always did when it was around Jonas.

I like you
, he wrote on the vacant area near my plate. Just three small words, but they managed to take up the whole page.

Good
, I wrote back, timid, excited, uninhibited.
I like U 2
.